But quite as prominent as Iguwi’s bashfulness and quaint eccentricities was his transparent sincerity and goodness. His religion had not the African tendency to exhaust itself in mental transports. The poor always had a friend in him. I have had to remonstrate with him for giving away all that he had. On one occasion, he came to me and asked the monthly payment of his salary in advance. I expressed surprise at his need of it, seeing that only a few days before I had paid him for the past month. But I found afterwards that he had expended the whole mouth’s payment in helping a poor widow to repair her house. She was not in any way related to him; and she had relations who were able to help her; but she had a sharp tongue and had turned them away from her, and when poverty and distress came there was none to help her. The most degraded of the heathen believed in Iguwi and would never have doubted his honesty or truth. In this sense, indeed, he was a “living epistle” of Christ which all could read and which none misunderstood. For so gentle a spirit he had a set of categories that were especially drastic. On one occasion, when I asked him how many persons had attended his village prayer-meeting, he replied: “Fifteen Christians and six sinners.” The attendance on the preceding Sunday was “ninety Christians and twenty-five sinners.” Iguwi was a remarkably good preacher. He had been taught in the mission school at Baraka in the old days when English was still permitted, but at best he received there only the equivalent of a primary-school education. After he decided to study for the ministry he received further training in a theological class. It was a mystery to me how a man so bashful and diffident had ever chosen the ministry for a profession. But when Iguwi stood on the platform his diffidence disappeared entirely and his speech was perfectly free and courageous. The people all enjoyed his preaching and were helped by it. He was so absent-minded, however, in regard to his dress, that a committee should have been appointed to look him over before he went into the pulpit, in order to see that nothing essential had been omitted, and that his clothes were fastened on him securely. A perpetual problem to the native mind is how to get clothes to stay on without buttons—a problem of which polite African society anxiously awaits the solution. Even with buttons, the imported garments of civilization are still uncertain, when worn by those who are not to the manner born. Sometimes, as if by a sudden act of disenchantment, the buttons simultaneously unfasten, strings untie and clothes fall off. Iguwi’s trousers were supported by a red sash, which often got loose and began to unwind slowly as he preached. When the loose end of the sash touched the floor, it was a question as to what the climax of the sermon would be. I finally advised him either to preach shorter sermons or wear a longer sash.